Best Russian Short Stories eBook

And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly—­and
very cruelly. The fallen classes, we say.
And who are the fallen classes, I should like to know?
They are, first of all, people with the same bones,
flesh, and blood and nerves as ourselves. We
have been told this day after day for ages. And
we actually listen—­and the devil only knows
how hideous the whole thing is. Or are we completely
depraved by the loud sermonising of humanism?
In reality, we also are fallen folks, and, so far
as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of
self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority.
But enough of this. It is all as old as the hills—­so
old that it is a shame to speak of it. Very old
indeed—­yes, that’s what it is!

LAZARUS

BY LEONID ANDREYEV

I

When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days
and nights in the mysterious thraldom of death, and
returned alive to his home, it was a long time before
any one noticed the evil peculiarities in him that
were later to make his very name terrible. His
friends and relatives were jubilant that he had come
back to life. They surrounded him with tenderness,
they were lavish of their eager attentions, spending
the greatest care upon his food and drink and the
new garments they made for him. They clad him
gorgeously in the glowing colours of hope and laughter,
and when, arrayed like a bridegroom, he sat at table
with them again, ate again, and drank again, they
wept fondly and summoned the neighbours to look upon
the man miraculously raised from the dead.

The neighbours came and were moved with joy.
Strangers arrived from distant cities and villages
to worship the miracle. They burst into stormy
exclamations, and buzzed around the house of Mary and
Martha, like so many bees.

That which was new in Lazarus’ face and gestures
they explained naturally, as the traces of his severe
illness and the shock he had passed through.
It was evident that the disintegration of the body
had been halted by a miraculous power, but that the
restoration had not been complete; that death had
left upon his face and body the effect of an artist’s
unfinished sketch seen through a thin glass. On
his temples, under his eyes, and in the hollow of
his cheek lay a thick, earthy blue. His fingers
were blue, too, and under his nails, which had grown
long in the grave, the blue had turned livid.
Here and there on his lips and body, the skin, blistered
in the grave, had burst open and left reddish glistening
cracks, as if covered with a thin, glassy slime.
And he had grown exceedingly stout. His body was
horribly bloated and suggested the fetid, damp smell
of putrefaction. But the cadaverous, heavy odour
that clung to his burial garments and, as it seemed,
to his very body, soon wore off, and after some time
the blue of his hands and face softened, and the reddish
cracks of his skin smoothed out, though they never
disappeared completely. Such was the aspect of
Lazarus in his second life. It looked natural
only to those who had seen him buried.